Friday, 5 July 2013

Taste the difference…

The notion of ‘food’ is somewhat looser in China,
than in the West – it pretty much includes everything that was at some point
(or still is) alive. Here in Guangzhou there’s a saying: ‘They eat everything
that has legs, but it’s not a table, and everything that has wings, but it’s
not a plane”. That sums up nicely the Chinese approach to the dualistic
division of the world into edible and non-edible things. The second group is
virtually non-existent.

One of the
first things I’ve done in China was to go to a supermarket - the experience has
scarred me for life. There were deep-frozen starfish, dried seahorses,
pre-packed chicken feet (they eat it as candy here, yumm), sea cucumbers, live
eels and frogs, and a whole galaxy of slimy swamp beasts of every ungodly shape
and colour. Things, not even Bear Grylls would ever consider to eat. And this
wasn’t even in a sketchy back-alley market, but in an ultramodern, state of the
art shopping mall! This doesn’t mean of course that you can’t find the same
things on the street as well. Every morning on my daily trip to the office, I
have to pass a couple of vendor’s who are in the live turtle business. The
cleaver and the thick cutting board are there to ensure that they don’t stay
alive for long (the turtles, not the vendors). I had the “pleasure” to see how the little fellas are being liberated
from their shells, and I have to say, it’s a rather messy procedure. Not
exactly surgical, but various tools are involved as well. To spare those with
weaker constitution, I won’t share the details - but if you imagine going to
the dentist, who starts to work on your skull with a rusty screwdriver, you
wouldn’t be far from what it was like.

(Un)lucky stars

Dogs,
however are not on the menu in Guangzhou – they actually take care of their
pets with such fervor, that it’s bordering on the perverse – unlike in other
parts of China, where puppies go right in the pot. Along with the rats, who are
roaming freely on the streets of Guangzhou in large packs, apparently carefree
and well fed - their only nemesis being the massive hairy spider, which we
found in our building the other day. Insects are also not very popular around
here, but I heard that they sometimes eat deep-fried bees. They are crunchy
I’ve been told, divine with a bit of honey.

The only
insect I’ve seen being sold in large quantities is, in fact, not consumed as
food, but rather as aphrodisiac. It’s also, coincidentally, the weirdest shit,
I have ever had the luck to come across with. It’s the Chong Cao, or the Winter Worm, which is a sort of parasitic fungus that gets into the living larvae of
the ghost moth, kills it and mummifies the poor sod. Then from its forehead out
the little fungus comes, like a twig. These little charmers are sold for a
sky-high price, and actually have some scientifically proven benefits. Can’t
imagine what those benefits might be, but they have to at least grow back limbs
for me to ever try this delicacy.

Worming up

And there’s
the deal with the heads. They always leave the head of the birds on, let it be
chicken, duck, goose or even pigeon. The main thing about a bird’s featherless
head is that it’s absolutely hideous. It’s got bones sticking out of it, gaping
holes all over and beady little purple eyes staring into nothing – in short,
not something I would consider an appetizing addition to my plate. The Chinese
also have the tendency to ruin a perfectly good chicken by simply boiling it in
whole, and thus turning it into something that looks like a drowned heroin
addict. It goes without saying, that no organ or intestine can avoid its dark
fate of being eaten – my favourite dish that I will neverever try is ‘boiled goose miscellaneous’.

I’m being unfair;
however, as Guangzhou is what every foodie imagines how heaven must be like!
Being relatively close to Hong-Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia,
Indonesia and more or less to Japan – one can find everything that Asian
cuisine has to offer! Anything that happens not to be completely freaking weird
is actually so delicious, that you can’t wait for the next meal to come. It’s
like a culinary swinger party full of swimsuit models, with the occasional
creep skulking around the corner. Curry, seafood, sushi, noodles you name it, they
make it ten times better than at the sad little take-away at the end of your
street. It’s cheap too, so cheap that I would spend more if I cooked for
myself. This means that I’ll have quite an extensive knowledge of the local
gastronomy by the end of my stay, possibly filling a couple of more posts.

Mr. Eel is having a bad day

Speaking of
which: as we more or less covered what they eat here, we are yet to talk about
the second half of the story – namely, how they eat! Fear not, it’s at least as
bewildering as a big fat winter worm, so bear with me as I unravel the
mysteries of the East in the posts to come!